Fuel Consumption Prediction in Dual-Fuel Low-Speed Marine Engines With Low-Pressure Gas Injection

Abstract

The International Maritime Organization has expressed its concern about the pollution caused by ships by putting in place regulations to decrease greenhouse gas emissions. As a result, ships must evermore be fitted with efficient and environmentally friendly engines, and one of the most essential selection parameters to consider is the specific fuel consumption. This parameter can be obtained by means of simulation models with various levels of sophistication, which can be either coded in basic programming languages or run in dedicated packages. The aim of the present study is to conceive a facilitated model to calculate the specific fuel consumption of low-speed dual-fuel engines with low-pressure gas injection driving either fixed or controllable pitch propellers. Clear specific fuel consumption trends were revealed when a normalization process was employed and then polynomials were obtained by numerical regression. This model requires very limited input data to predict the specific fuel consumption of an engine at any contractual maximum continuous rating, including part load operation. Results showed very close qualitative behavior and the highest deviations occurred for the brake-specific pilot consumption, peaking at about 5%. At last, the developed approach was concluded to be an easy-to-implement and fast-to-run model with promising usage for optimization studies.